Recent theory has argued that colonial mimicry of the metropole is not a symptom of the
colonised's loss of identity, but instead a subversive strategy that signifies the
colonized's refusal of their role as inferior others. Mimicry as empowerment has been
exclusively applied to the colonized of colour because the imperial ideal propagated in
particular by Kipling was that the English are the English whether born in England or a
colony. This paper argues that the colonial, especially the colonial woman, was regarded
as inferior by the home-born. If the Southern African woman writer wanted to be taken
seriously and write a new national literature, she had to appropriate the tone and the
perspectives of the metropole. Examples include one of Cynthia Stockley's heroines
who is a literal mimic, narrators who register as exotic what is the writer's familiar
reality, and English-born women allowing their new home to give them command over a
new language. The larger purpose of these strategies is not to become English but to
show that by being able to write like an English woman, the colony has at its disposal
authoritative voices that are evidence of its right to nationhood.